Rene Bousquet

Rene Bousquet (11 May 1909-8 June 1993) was Secretary-General of the Police under Vichy France from May 1942 to 31 December 1943. In this position, he was responsible for controlling the collaboration between the French and Nazi police forces in occupied France, and he was responsible for sending thousands of Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust, despite periodically helping the Allies. Bousquet was revered as a hero until revelations about his crimes against humanity were made in the 1980s, and he was killed at his apartment on 8 June 1993 while awaiting trial.

Biography
Rene Bousquet was born in Montauban, southern France on 11 May 1909, the son of a radical socialist notary. He worked as a lawyer before entering local politics, and he became a hero in 1930 for saving several people from a flood; he was awarded the Legion d'Honneur for his heroism. Bousquet entered the SFIO party and served as an aide to several radical socialist politicians, becoming sous prefect for Vitry-le-Francois in April 1938 and general secretary of the prefecture for Chalons-en-Champagne.

In September 1941, Bousquet became the youngest prefet in France, serving under the Vichy France regime. Bousquet was an enemy of the far-right due to his socialist background, and he helped some POWs to escape and worked to lighten the economic toll of the German occupation on the Marne department. In 1942, he twice refused to head the Ministry of Agriculture, and he became Secretary-General of Police in May 1942. Despite his earlier heroism, he sought and obtained consent from the SS to send 5,000 Jews from Drancy to concentration camps in the east, although he did prevent children of under 18 and parents with children under 5 years of age from being deported. In January 1943, he worked with German police to expel 30,000 people from the "terrorist nest" at the Old Port of Marseille before destroying the neighborhood, and 2,000 Jewish residents were sent to extermination camps. In December 1943, he was fired for attempting to arrest the killers of a radical journalist, and Milice head Joseph Darnand replaced him. He would be kept under surveillance by the Germans for two years, and his far-right opponents accused him of working with the resistance.

In 1949, he was sentenced to five years in prison, but he was acquitted for helping the French Resistance. He was excluded from the public service, so he instead worked for the Bank of Indochina and for several newspapers. In 1957, his Legion d'Honneur was restored, and he was granted amnesty the next year. In 1991, however, Bousquet was finally indicted for crimes against humanity, and he was shot dead at his apartment on 8 June 1993. His murderer served ten years in prison, with the jury calling him mentally unstable.